Random Acts of Engineering
HARDWARE
This is the block diagram, some of the things may have changed since we first worked with it. The Mega Claw is an Arduino Pro Mini with some Sabertooth Motor Controllers and a PC communicating over serial.
Continue reading ‘The Mega Claw – Electronics & Software (6 of 9)’
THE FRAME
For the frame of the Mega Claw we figured we would start with a regular canopy. It was affordable and much more portable than the original one we started working with. In this segment We’ll talk more about how the main structure was put together and why it was designed that way.
Continue reading ‘The Mega Claw – The Frame, Sliders and Prize Bin (5 of 9)’
The joystick was a definite must. We had talked about it and stumbled across Mary Flanagan’s giant joystick and it was final, we needed something epic. Just like her’s, ours is modeled after the Atari days of joysticks. It’s human sized and enough to be a project itself. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to use this to play games as well.
Continue reading ‘The Mega Claw – Joystick (4 of 9)’
So I designed the real claw in Google Sketchup, a 3d design tool. I decided to make it out of 1/4in plywood and to add a skate bearing at every joint to reduce any friction or strain on the motor. In hindsight this cost a lot more and probably wasn’t necessary. Continue reading ‘The Mega Claw – Claaaaw (3 of 9)’
Here’s a little sketch of the original idea for the Mega Claw. Build a big frame, make a slide go back and forth left and right and drop a claw. Easy right?
Continue reading ‘The Mega Claw – Concepts and Experiments (2 of 9)’
So we gave a lot of thought on what we would bring to Maker Faire NYC 2010. It needed to be fun to build, challenging to design and fun for non-makers to see. We wanted to keep it low cost or it needed to be marketable. Also it should be something we can upgrade every year. A mega sized claw was the best idea we had. It needed to be the biggest in existence, modular and transportable in a van, and just thinking about it brought nostalgia of childhood. The first thing we decided on was the size, it had to have a 10′x10′ footprint. It’s the maximum length we could fit in our cars and the maximum length any hardware store sells. The next thing we figured out was how many prizes we would need to stuff into this to make it look awesome. We figured the best way to fill the machine was to use balloons so it would look like a giant ball pit. The balloons would all represent a prize of some sort and be easier for the player to grab. A little math in the excel sheet below and we figured it would take close to 1000 balloons and take 1 person about 8hrs+ to fill it all up. Yikes! Also we started playing around with some numbers and we figured the project would cost us around $2000. It was too awesome an idea to pass up, no matter the cost. So we all committed and started chugging away at concepts and mini experiments.
Table of contents
The Mega Claw – Intro (Splash)
The Mega Claw – Logistics (1 of 9)
The Mega Claw – Concepts and Experiments (2 of 9)
The Mega Claw – Claaaaw (3 of 9)
The Mega Claw – Joystick (4 of 9)
The Mega Claw – The Frame (5 of 9)
The Mega Claw – Electronics & Software (6 of 9)
The Mega Claw – Prizes (7 of 9)
This weekend I was carving pumpkins with my girlfriend. Pumpkin carving, a soothing time to bond, relax, and justify having power tools. Rather than hacking away at a pumpkin with a dinner blade, my trusty jigsaw and dremel did most of the cuts and an exacto knife detailed. It was much less effort and the pumpkins came out great.
Being me, I wasn’t settled with a mildly dangerous tea candle. I upgraded the wick by adding part of a regular candle. This made the pumpkin burn with a much more ominous glow (Harzard +1).
It was good, but not great. I went down to the shop and bore a hole into the back of the pumpkin. Add one spray can and that brought the pumpkin from seasonal fire hazard to double fisted spray can/fire extiguisher dangerous (Harzard +3 Safety +2).
In hind sight I should have bore the hole larger. Why? Well the fuel I’m spraying there tended to puddle up in the opening and set the pumpkin on fire, thankfully the pumpkin was fresh and still moist.
More photos after the break
Continue reading ‘Halloween 2009′
Sawdust Cannon. from Ben Stone on Vimeo.
Hehe, now someone go build a rapid fire version.
No it’s not a stargate, believe it or not it’s a bladeless fan. This fan blows a stream out of the blue ring. The blue ring has a special airfoil shape that can magnify the airflow up to 15x. Since it involves no blades this stream is uninterrupted. This fan seems pretty cool (if $300 means nothing to you,) if you ask me I’ll stick to my propellor style fan. Mine comes with soothing fan noises and doubles as a sound effect generator.
It certainly has the wow factor, but hackaday.com pointed out it probably has blades in the bottom to push air into the ring. Perhaps not the same traditional style but blades still. This design is very novel, so as far as the user is concerned it’s bladeless. It’s like buying a Roomba and realizing it needs to be emptied every once and a while.
Dyson also developed the Airblade hand dryer (the funny looking one you place your hand into and pull out slowly.) Plenty of videos on their site.
[via Toolmonger]
[via HackaDay]
Matthew Shieh created this very interesting audio meter. Instead of the typical LM3915 VU meter, Matt designed the amplifier to capture ambient sound from a small mic. For the interface he used a photoresistor and capacitive touch button controlled by a PIC16F716 . The photoresistor lets him dim the LEDs when it’s dark to save power. His project really shines in the write up and best of all fits into a petridish.